Premiere: Xan – PP

Having moved to Moscow and ingratiated himself with ‘John’s Kingdom’, a creative community helmed by Pavel Milyakov (AKA Buttechno), Xan has moved quickly over the last couple of years refining his sound which mindfully matches heavy, compressionless bass with sharply articulated highs, drawing intricate and versatile rhythms out with sparingly tended melodic touches. He’s released with the fine young Berlin-based 777 a couple of times, had a Mo’Wax-esque tune on a Progressive Futures comp this year, and now joins the ranks of J Albert and Flo Kupfer with PP, a release on the superb Moscow-based DIY techno imprint Private Persons.

We’re offered here the release’s title track, PP, which opens with scatterbrained, jittering arps, stamped into place by an edgeless, heavy bass kick. The track unfolds, pouring unflinching Hessle weight and attitude into the mould of cold Drexciyan electro – part industrial machinery, part aquatic leviathan, born of Detroit and reared in Moscow.